The Openers of the Gate

By Elizabeth Louisa Moresby

A collection of ten short stories of supernatural phenomena, psychic events and the occult. „These stories are founded on the deepest and highest range of Asiatic thought though the scenes of some are in the West. That thought is as vital for the West as for the East. The background is fictional but the stories are all true. In this connection I draw attention especially to the two entitled respectively „Hell” and „The Man Who Saw” – L. Adams Beck (E. Barrington). E. Barrington started writing her novels, which commonly had an oriental setting, at the age of sixty. She was also a distinguished writer of esoteric works such as „The Story of Oriental Philosophy” and „The Splendor of Asia”, and on Theosophy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ktoczyta.pl
• Release date: Aug 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9788382004588

Book preview

Elizabeth Louisa Moresby

The Openers of the Gate

Warsaw 2019

Contents

The Openers of the Gate

Lord Killary

How Felicity Came Home

Waste Manor

The Mystery of Iniquity

Many Waters Cannot Quench Love

The Horoscope

The Thug

Hell

The Man Who Saw - A Story of True Vision

The Openers of the Gate

If I measure the events of this story by the effect they have had on my own life and beliefs they seem to me stupendous in their simplicity, but what they will mean to others I cannot guess. Only I know that, when I gave the stark truth of these flashes of insight (for so I will call them) to a man well qualified to estimate their value from the material and psychic angles, he considered a moment and said: I can well understand that it might be distasteful to you to give the public the facts, and yet when one remembers how the world at present is trembling on the verge of realization of the undiscovered continent of the superconscious faculty in man I believe that every atom of reliable evidence should be added to the common stock. And I think it the more in your case because of the very unusual way in which what we call the lower consciousness of animals was involved. Therefore, though you have not asked my opinion on this point, I say, Write it down. It is a true record.’"

That decided me. It may mean as much to some others as it did to me.

I will be brief with the preliminaries but some are necessary. Two people were concerned, my distant cousin, Helen Keith, and myself. She married as a very young girl, and her husband had died after ten years of a very unhappy marriage. She had no children. I am unmarried, a doctor by profession, my name James Livingstone. I scarcely need name myself, 2 however, for, though the great results are mine also, the story is hers.

She had a charming little house near Tetford, the lawn sloping down to the Thames, and there, after release from her miserable bondage, she settled down to shape her life as best she might into some semblance of future hope and happiness. My practice was in one of the western suburbs of London lower down the river and my chief pleasure when I got a spare hour was to motor over and sit under the great trees on her lawn, watching the river glide by in the eternal serenity, and there talk the sun down the sky in the harmony of perfect understanding. I know there were people who said it would be a very suitable arrangement if we married some day–she was only thirty when her husband died, I thirty-eight. But I also know that such a thought never occurred or would have occurred to her nor at that time to me. We possessed the treasure of an equal friendship–rare enough, God knows, between a man and a woman–helped by the touch of kindred blood, and she with her wretched memories of marriage would have shrunk with horror from the notion; the bird set free has no yearning for the cage–while for myself my profession engrossed me body and soul.

I had made some mark with work on the endocrine glands, had written a monograph which attracted notice, and it was Helen’s opinion as well as mine that I might yet climb out of the ruck and do some useful stuff. Marriage had no more interest for me than psychology, and if I could put it more strongly I would. But Helen and her life interested me enormously. She was so bruised, so wounded in the battle, that I wondered sometimes if she would ever regain heart and hope and march onward as man or woman should. 3 She had fallen by the wayside, and the world went by her. From the medical point of view too it was interesting; one of those obscure cases of jangled nerves which are most difficult of all to deal with because there are hardly any pronounced symptoms. The only really definite one was insomnia–you could see that in the feverish brightness of her eyes and a twitch sometimes of the eyelids. Beautiful eyes, brave, honest, and kind, in a white intellectual face with sensitive mouth and chin, but they had a tortured look still, if one caught her off guard. Otherwise she lived her life like other people, had her friends and saw enough of them to escape the reproach of eccentricity and, I hoped, was gradually beginning to take peace of mind for granted.

Yet I doubted. She could interest herself in nothing; she–with exceptional intellectual gifts, with money enough to set her free from material fetters, with health behind it all, as I was assured, if only one could touch the hidden spring and set the nerves working smoothly again. But, there seemed to be no point at which she could take hold of things.

I came over one Sunday afternoon of many to Tetford and found her sitting under the great sweeping beech, staring at the river where the boats went up and down with happy young people gay as flowers, whose dresses and blazers made bright reflections in still water. The lily-leaves swayed gently in the little bights, and bulrushes stood on guard along the banks. The meadows on the other side glittered like cloth of gold sheening into cloth of silver with buttercups and daisies. A blackbird sang divinely from among flaming rhododendrons. It was a perfect setting for perfect content and yet–her book had fallen on the grass, and with chin propped on her hand she saw no beauty, no peace, only the nightmare of the past.

She stared and looked up smiling as I brushed over the lawn, but the smile did not deceive me.

Helen, I said, flinging myself on the grass beside her with my hands under my head so that I could look up into the towering green above me, I’ve been thinking of you. Not in my honorary capacity of cousin, but as an eminent medical gent, and I say you can’t go on as you’re going. Did you sleep two or four hours last night? Be honest!

She evaded details.

Not brilliantly, but enough. It’s surprising how much less sleep one can do with than most people think. And it isn’t half bad in a way. The night goes so quickly–there’s such a lot of interesting things to think of. If only one weren’t rather tired in the morning, there’s no other drawback.

Exactly. But that being so we can’t go on living on capital. Now I’ve come down with a definite proposal.

I hope it’s not a proposal of marriage, she said gaily. Only yesterday old Mrs. Lowther told me that was the clear intention of Providence as regarded us both. Will people ever learn the noble and simple art of minding their own business?

Well–why should they? It amuses them and doesn’t hurt us. Old Lowther lives in a perpetual drama of other people’s imaginary adventures. She’d die of her own company if she didn’t. But what I wanted to say is this. We’ve often agreed that The Way of All Flesh’ is probably the cleverest novel written in English, haven’t we?"

Yes–and what’s the proposal? A sequel in collaboration? You’d much better stick to the endocrine glands.

Gowk! Do you remember that the hero goes through a beastly experience which simply leaves him 5 drained and flattened out? His doctor gives some very remarkable advice: He’s not strong enough to travel. I should take him to the Zoo. The animals have the most remarkable curative effects. I don’t recommend the influence of the felines. They are apt to be too stimulating, but the larger mammals, such as the elephants and greater bovines, are immensely soothing.’ I haven’t got it right–I’m mixing my own notions up with Butler’s–but the point was–"

The point appears to be that I’m to ride up and down the Zoo on elephants. Well, Jim, I won’t. So now you know.

I liked Helen’s laugh. It pleased me even more than the blackbird’s song. The worst was that one heard it so much less often.

You idiot! she added. Every word of that stuff is pure irony and excellent irony at that. I’ve often enjoyed it.

I’m not so sure. I think Butler’s right and that the society of animals is the most soothing in all the world. Look at the shepherd in poetry. Look at the milkmaid with diamond eyes and cheeks of rose! Look at the hunting horn and the gay tally-ho!

Yes, and so nice for the hare and the deer! she said sarcastically.

We’ll all go a-hunting today

All nature looks smiling and gay–’

so let’s go out and kill something. Why not a little blood in the picture!"

I raised myself on my elbow and protested.

I aspired neither to elephants nor hunting for you. What I was leading up to was simply that I should like you to have a dog. I believe in dogs. They’re gentlemen.

When they’re not ladies. Well, I respect animals. I’d die to save them from cruelty, but I neither know nor understand them. I’ve never lived with them. And I don’t like soulless things about me. It’s bad enough to have no soul myself. I don’t want to see my mortality repeated on a lower scale. It’s tragic to me.

This was an old story. Helen had no instinct of immortality, no blind belief in a spring after the winter of death. Nor for that matter had I. We both had had our upbringing in families priding themselves on a scientific view of life and no nonsensical theories. My father had liked to call himself a Positivist, though I never troubled my head as to what that might imply beyond the agreeable fact that we never went to church. If Helen had not been in much the same case to start with I can imagine that her life with Moray Keith would have pretty well killed any spiritual romance in her. But I could not agree that it bore on dogs one way or another.

My dear Helen, you’re talking crass nonsense. What have souls got to do with it! A dog’s the best company in the world, bar none, and that quiet non-intrusive kind of companionship is just what you want.

She would only ridicule me.

If I can’t have an elephant–but I really almost could on this lawn, and he would just love wallowing in the river!–why not fall back on a dog, you think! No, thank you. I’d almost as soon adopt a baby. I believe you get fond of dogs and then they die in about a year. I prefer to have all my troubles under my own hat.

So we argued and she was obstinate and the talk drifted to other things. But each time I came down her eyes were brighter and more wearied, and she could interest herself in nothing. Each time she dragged 7 herself more tragically through days that must be endured, facing life as if all were well, but crippled–crippled!

If only you had a touch of genius or anything like that! I said one day with more anxiety than flattery. Then you’d put things at their right values. You’d see Keith isn’t worth a curse, much less a memory. But you’re so confoundedly commonplace.

I wanted even to make her angry if I could. But she took that smiling too. Then more seriously.

Jim, I have a genius for one thing and yet in that I’ve always been a mute inglorious Milton and I expect to die unhonored and unsung. But I really have a genius for loving, as sure as you sit there. I could be someone else and make them me. But that’ll never come off.

If it couldn’t there was no use discussing it. I waved that aside. I was not fool enough to suggest the usual tonic and a little gentle distraction of the mind. So it lapsed and I grew yet more anxious about her ultimate recovery of the instinct of happy living. And then a remarkable thing happened.

But before I go on to that I pause to hope I have made it clear that we were neither of us people with an ounce of what are called psychic instincts or promptings. If I have not, I must put it clearly on record that there was nothing of the kind. Helen had rather a cold critical intellectuality. I was just what I have described. And now for the beginning.

Once in a way she would coax me to a theater in London, and then I would motor her home and return to my own diggings. On this particular night the play was excellent, and we had enjoyed ourselves to the full. I remember we came out laughing and I suggested supper at Prince’s and she agreed; and I left her standing 8 on the edge of the pavement while I hunted for a taxi in the throng. Suddenly there was confusion and a general hold-up of traffic; I heard shouts and a woman screamed near me, and I made my way back hot-foot to where I had left Helen, and she was gone.

I could not even dimly imagine what had happened nor where to look for her. She might have forgotten something in the stalls and have gone back. In my bewilderment and with the crowd hurrying past it seemed safer to stand where I had left her until she appeared. And then to my consternation the crowd parted, and Helen emerged from the street, her white dress torn and stained, her wrap gone, clasping something in her arms.

Good God, what on earth is it? Where have you been?

It’s a dog! she gasped. A puppy. It was right under a taxi and I swung it out and fell down. Do let’s get away! Look at the crowd.

But are you hurt? My dear old girl!

For she was white as death, and the bystanders were very much inclined to cheer her for a regular sport. The London mob loves pluck and it likes a dog. A crowd was certainly gathering and a swift getaway in a taxi strongly indicated. We achieved it.

Little brute! You might have killed yourself. Will you swear you’re not hurt? I said indignantly when we were bowling along.

Honest Injun! And he isn’t hurt either. Look here! she said.

She showed me the smallest black Scotch terrier I had ever seen. How such an infant contrived to be wandering in the Strand at half past eleven will never be known. At least we never found out. Helen declared when she knew him better that it was his audacious 9 pluck and curiosity which had sent him out into the world to seek adventures when the rest of his family were nestling (figuratively) under their mother’s wing in a padded basket. That seemed probable enough. He had the look of it now, though trembling all over with nerves and amazement.

He was evidently a gentleman of the bluest Scotch blood, perfect, with sharply pricked velvet ears, bright wise eyes, large head, and quaint little sturdy legs, the promise of a square well-set body–every point as it should be; and I speak with authority for I know a bit about that breed. I liked the look of him, the feel of him, the minute I saw the creature.

Well, you have never ceased bothering me to get a dog. Now I’ve got him. The gods have spoken. And the first result is that we can’t go out to supper. I look as if I’d been in a drunken scrap. And, good heavens! where’s my wrap? I never thought of it till now. See what it is to have a dog!

She would not be serious, but as a matter of fact it was rather a splendid thing to have dashed into that whirl of cars for the small scrap of life in her arms. I doubt if I should have done it myself. I stated that fact judicially.

Oh yes, you would! He’s so ridiculously small, you see. You never would have let him go under just because he wanted to explore. The courage of the thing! What shall we call him?

Then you mean to keep him! But he’s a valuable little chap. I don’t know whether we shouldn’t advertise....

I do, she said decisively. "If he was valuable to them they shouldn’t have let him be parading the Strand at night. I’m–well, I’m damned if I advertise. He’s mine."

I noticed she was holding him up so that he lay with his head on her bare breast. It seemed the soft contact pleased her. I withdrew the motion about advertising and suggested Sandy.

Yes–that will do. Sandy. She repeated it in a voice with a new note in it. I suppose if one has saved a life–even a dog’s–at the risk of one’s own it may mean more than a little to one. Anyhow it was clear that the gods knew best. I took them home and still she held him to her breast.

I pass on to the next time I went over to Tetford. Sandy had made good. She said he had reconnoitered the house and garden and decided they would do. There was indeed everything to recommend them. The lawn was a velvet couch for dreaming in the sunshine, and the trees here and there were full of promise for investigation and scuffling rushes. There was a rabbity paddock at one side of the garden from which nothing but a bowl of milk would coax him, so did it fascinate the hunter in his queer little scrap of a body. Then also he was a born swimmer and even in those first gropings of exploration had tried to dash into the river to what Helen believed would be a watery grave, and had spoiled a second dress as she hauled him out. Delicious secrets were evidently hidden for him in the clumps of rhododendrons, and when at last, exhausted with adventure, he collapsed upon the grass with a pink tongue extended disclosing teeth as white as new ivory, it needed no words to assure her that his cup was full. He asked no more of life. She told me the story of these first days with a kind of amazed interest–amazed that such a trifle should have got hold of her. But it had with a vengeance!

She had a tendency at first to call him the elephant and to assure me that she found the presence of such 11 a huge mammal inexpressibly soothing. It had been exactly the right prescription! Well, she might laugh but it was true. From the minute that dog entered the house she was a changed woman, and I had only to stand aside and watch the miracle of love. I own it interested me enormously, for I had never seen her under that especial sway before–there had been only decorous family affections and then a marriage of terror and repulsion. Now–well, even from the medical point of view it was interesting. I was not a little proud of my intuition and began to think there was something to be said for her theory that she had a genius for love. I must have sensed that truth unconsciously. Her old nurse, Mrs. Bramham, who adored her, proposed at first that Sandy should sleep in the kitchen in the character of a watch-dog. His size made him ridiculous from that point of view in any case, but I saw Helen’s eye harden with resolve.

No, Brammy dear. He means to sleep on the foot of my bed. I saw that the minute he walked into the bedroom. I should have put my foot down then, but I forgot to. We’ll have to put up with it.

But, heavens above, Miss Helen–you that can’t sleep as it is! You’ll never get so much as a wink! A nasty dog picked up in the street!

She sat down on the floor and he scrambled into her lap, and the two looked up at Mrs. Bramham–who saw it was a lost cause and shook her head groaning audibly. I also had misgivings on that head I own. A lively puppy is scarcely the bedfellow for an insomniac.

Yet when I next came over–and I came oftener, from curiosity, and to see my treatment through–Helen assured me that she had slept like a top after the first night. That had been a terror.

"He had so much to see to that he was scuttling up 12 and down the bed and burrowing under the pillows all the time, getting to know his way about, you see. He had to do that before he could settle down. And once he fell off the bed with a fearful plop and I thought he was done for. Then I tried to make him take his milk and we spilled it and broke the basin. It was a perfect Walpurgis Nacht of horrors, and Brammy nearly preached me to death next morning, for I was a wreck. But after that–mark you! the very next night–he curled up at the foot of the bed and never stirred till six nor did I. And it’s been the same ever since. Look at me!"

I looked. Her eyes were beaming–no tension in the light of them. The strained pucker between the eyebrows was gone. There was the indescribable radiation of happiness that indicates health alike of body and mind, and her lips and cheeks bloomed like the flowers in the garden. The little miracle-worker sat looking gravely up into her face, and she snatched him up, struggling for freedom in her arms, while she asked triumphantly:

"Was it worth dashing into the taxis to save such a worthless little bit of goods? Was it?"

And I answered yes, with fullest conviction.

Now here I must indicate the extraordinary love that bound those two together because it bore on what followed. Night or day they were never separated. Wherever Helen went, Sandy went. Even on shopping days in London he followed, but on his leash for safety. Whether she read or wrote he was at her feet. When she punted or paddled on the river he had his cushion in the stern. Even in his garden and meadow adventures she must follow or he was soon at her feet again. Their walks were heavens of romance to both, for a Scotch terrier is a born scout and he made her one too. 13 In a word, he cured her. I saw the Helen of eighteen again, expectant and glad. And under the influence of this constant human companionship (for as regards other dogs he was a little stand-off and high-brow), intellect in Sandy developed together with his adoration until I solemnly declare I have seen that dog do things that no hypothesis but reason could account for, and highly complicated reason at that. I have seen him think, consider, and act on his thought, and I have known that speech itself could not make clearer either his love or the wishes and resolutions he shaped in that queer, intelligent brain-box of his and proceeded to carry into effect. Sometimes I have wondered whether his very speechlessness did not presage that higher form of communication when we shall desert the clumsy medium of words for something better.

Certainly Helen thought so, and their mutual understanding and contentment was in its way a most beautiful thing to see. I told her frankly one day that there had been a time when I began to think her mainspring was broken and the joy of life past resurrection.

And look at you now, and you owe it all to Sandy! I said: Wasn’t I right? Wasn’t it a resurrection?

A thousand times right. But– She paused on a long sigh. Isn’t it strange and fearful to think that for all that love there’s no resurrection? My little Sandy will die and it will all be poured out and wasted like spilled water. All that love!

No worse than for us! I answered shortly, I never yet heard an argument about the mortality of animals that didn’t cut at ourselves too. We have nothing to plume ourselves on. Your love will be as much wasted as Sandy’s, if you come to that. And yet you would give your life for him. You very nearly did, even before you knew him.

He lay with his head between his paws and bright eyes fixed on his mistress, as though he drank in every word she uttered. That was a favorite attitude of his. I could almost believe he understood and followed our talk.

Oh yes, I claim no exemption for ourselves! she said sadly.

"Strange law of every mortal lot!

Which man, proud man finds hard to bear,

And builds himself I know not what

Of second life, I know not where.

No, I’m not so weak as that. Sandy goes out like a blown-out spark and I too. Well–let us live and love, for tomorrow we die. Only–I wish I might go first!"

And what for Sandy then?

"I did think of your taking him. But I knew even that wouldn’t console him. I’m a poor thing, but his own. So I’ve put it in my letter of instructions that you’re to give him the mercy of sleep and then we’re to be burned together. Tell me, Jim, did you ever see the roses so lovely as they are this year?"

I knew she shied at the subject from sheer inability to face her own position if the order of the exit should be reversed. And indeed I myself–and here the medical man comes in again–was very apprehensive of what might happen in a nature so highly strung as hers, keyed by fate to such suffering, if such a thing were to be.

There are so many possible tragedies, you see, in those strange little mysterious lives lived so close beside us. I used to watch Sandy (and indeed I myself loved the wise little creature) frolicking about the lawn in the winning clumsy way those Scotch terriers have, and think how quickly the scene might change. He had his 15 adventures too–the day when a bull-terrier attacked him, and the little Scotchman stood up to him game as a rat and took his punishment like a man, until Helen, badly bitten herself, dragged the bulldog off and carried home her little warrior dripping blood along the road. But–it might have ended otherwise, and then what? I did not like to think. They were all in all to each other. Could one say more of God or man? Love is a queer thing. I have learned a lot more about it since then.

Reflecting, I brought her a present I knew she would dislike at first though from me she would not refuse it–a beautiful big Alsatian puppy, a harmony in cream and brown deepening into black on the back, with noble mask and keen ears and eyes, taut and alert in every nerve-cell. There is no dog more beautiful and faithful nor a better guard to his own people, and after the bull-terrier episode I thought Fritzel’s care might not be amiss. She accepted him graciously and he was adopted straight into the family. After a while she said:

"Jim, I love Fritzel with all my heart. But Sandy and I are one. Do you see the distinction? I decipher Fritzel’s mind from the outside, but I live in Sandy’s brain. You would not believe it–no, not even you!–if I told you how I can be in touch with him and he with me. Something far more intimate than words. Look now. I’ll call him."

He was rollicking round the paddock far away–a gentleman at his hunting and naturally engrossed. The grass ran down to the river bank and there were alluring water-rats among other attractions too many to be told. That paddock was his happiest hunting ground of all, and his business interests there growing daily.

She put her hand over her eyes and sat very still for a second, the other hand lifted for silence. In a moment 16 came a nearing rush and he was at her feet, panting, staring up into her eyes for instructions. A strange thing to see. In a moment more his round black paws were on her lap, his tail wagging furiously. Then he was off again, her eyes following him.

I called him with my mind, she said. I discovered that quite accidentally one day when I wanted him. And he can call me. If he were in difficulties now I should know; isn’t it strange? Do you believe in telepathy, Jim?

Certainly. There are all sorts of queer mental byways unexplored as yet, but I’m not sure I’ve heard of an animal case. I should like to see you do that again: it may have been chance.

Oh no, it wasn’t. I do it often. But Sandy has taken me in hand. You haven’t been here for so long that you don’t know the new development, she said. "You know there’s a crêche in the village for the kiddies whose mothers work in the factory at Felton. Well, I couldn’t help thinking how they’d like the lawn and Sandy and Fritzel, and so a woman brings up the three- and four-year-olds twice a week and we all have a great time. I’ve got to know some of the mothers too. Fritzel is perfect with children–and as for Sandy!" Words could not express that perfection.

We discussed it at great length, and again it interested me profoundly. She was opening out in so many ways–I could see the heart of universal compassion growing in her–that heart which brings understanding of all the world, and is to my mind the highest form of human development. I could give singular and beautiful instances of the effects I noticed of this, as more and more the dogs brought her in touch with the humanity about her. But I must come to the stranger parts of my story. I have given indication enough to show what they sprang from.

Four years had passed since Sandy’s arrival. Fritzel had grown into magnificence. A dog may have beauty as noble as that of a lion or an eagle and he had it all. He was a very present help in the troubles that the little Scotchman’s indomitable courage often invited, and the three walked abroad secure. My mind was at ease about them as it had never been yet. But be Fritzel what he would–and Helen loved the ground he walked on–their brains and hearts were not interwoven as were hers and Sandy’s. He would lie on her knees sometimes, looking up at her in a mute communion and interchange beyond any speech. They understood each other in the most intimate and beautiful fashion I have ever seen. Love had worked its miracle, and that atom of life had rebuilt Helen as doctors and philosophers could not. A singular thing to watch.

Then came the end. An agonized telephone from Helen:

Sandy is dying–poisoned. I have the vet here, but for God’s sake come.

I raced down, but I could do nothing. I will not describe the scene. I have no wish to play upon emotion and there are things that pierce me still when I recall them. The last convulsion came and she sat with her head dropped upon the little stiffening body. I shall never forget her face when she looked up then. Her words startled me:

"I saw an idiot child at the crêche yesterday. If God can do that–and this–who can forgive him? Is there any law anywhere at all in all this hell?"

I pass this time over. Again I have no wish to write emotionally and it was too pitiful for any words. I stayed that night, for it seemed to me that she might relapse into her old listlessness, and that Fritzel and I were her only safeguards.

It was then with senses sharpened by anxiety that I began to notice singular things about Fritzel. He had been devoted to Sandy–no closer dog-friendship ever existed, and they had formed certain habits which had all the authority of routine. Every morning after breakfast they trotted off side by side into the paddock to call upon the water-rats and other interesting families, and they allowed half an hour for this invariably.

Now on the morning after Sandy’s death he stood in the dining-room by Helen as we finished breakfast, bewildered, looking about him, looking up at her, like one lost in a world unknown. It touched me more than I like to say, coupled with her hopeless look of pain.

Suddenly I saw him turn to the French window open on the lawn. He froze into attention as if someone were coming up the drive. Do you know that amazingly beautiful attitude of suspense in a dog, when with head erect and one paw held up he thrills from nose-tip to tail-tip with hope and expectation? We watched him in amazement–there was no one he welcomed like that.

A breath of roses blew in at the window and ruffled the curtains. Fritzel’s paw dropped. He laughed all over his face, his tail wagged delightedly. He leaped to the window and was gone.

So soon to be happy–to forget! Helen said brokenly. Sandy wouldn’t have–